Using noisegates when recording drums on separate mics?

E

Emusic

New member
Hi. I'm pretty new to recording. Brand new to recording drums. When you mic up every drum how do you go along to separate the sounds? Is it common to use noisegates on the separate channels?
 
As with every thing in recording "It all depends". With drums depending on the style you will find quickly that you don't want to totally isolate every drum. Some bleed is good. I like to think of it as the glue that holds the kit together. With that said, I do alot of metal so I end up normally gating my snare, toms and kick. I prefer using an Expander though because its more musical for drums. Expansion doesn't totally cut the signal below the threshold but pushes it down to whatever ratio you set. BTW....I gate/use expansion after tracking, not during. Normally I try to use mic placement to eliminate as much bleed as possible but some bleed is inevitable.
 
if gating at all I only do the kick and the snare. These days I use software gates, they can look ahead on the fly
 
yer if i gate at all its the kick and snare, but i tend not to, i often find that once the gate is set to cut out bleed, it effects the sound of some of the kick hits, causing them to stop to suddenly, which is why i prefer not to gate generally.
 
The only way I have found to stop the bleed is to use a program like Drumagog, but to me, it doesn't sound natural anymore. The bleed is what gives the drums depth in the mix. Take it out, you might as well be using a drum machine....
 
Try the gates on all your drum mics. Whichever channels work better in the mix with a gate, leave em. There is no right and wrong, just your way and my way:D
 
Well, if you really want to get fussy about it, you need to have a good way of triggering the gates, and mics just don't do it. I have a friend who used to work for NIN, and when he first started with them, he made a system where there was a laser beam going over the head, so just before the stick hit the head, it broke the beam, and would trigger the gate. Of course, it was NIN, so it lasted all of about half a show before Trent Reznor poured a shitload of some liquid in to the control box.

Steve Albini does something similar, though his laser is bouncing off of a little piece of Mylar or some such on the bottom of the head, and the laser is inside the drum.

I don't have that kind of a budget, so I went to Rat Shack and bought some little Piezo Doorbell Buzzers, and I took out the piezo elements. I soldered on some enclosed 1/4 inch jacks, and then I use those to trigger the gates. Because the sound has to travel from the head to the mic through the air, but doesn't have to travel to the trigger through the air, the trigger is set off just a micro-second before the mic picks up the sound pressure. If is then very easy to set the gates to trigger when the drum is hit.

Obviously, this means that you need to track with gates, which a lot of people don't like, fearing that the gates might not trigger properly. But with the triggers, it works so consistently, it just is not an issue. Or at least, I have never had a problem.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
In the digital world, I gate after tracking. It is much easier to control things. I have ruined otherwise cool tracks by overgating and not really realizing it until later scrutiny.
 
That is one of the few rules that I do not break. The only time I ever gate during tracking is if I am recording a live show and the FOH mix takes priority over the tracks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top